Printing electronic documents within a personal computer operating system, such as Microsoft Windows, typically involves selecting a printer from a list of available local and network printers, selecting print options for the selected printer, and issuing a print request. A printer driver for the selected printer then sends data for printing to a print spool, which is a buffer feeding into a printer board.
After a print request is issued, the document is listed in a print queue for the selected printer, while the print job is pending. An administrator or the user issuing the print request typically can delete the job prior to its execution, and abort the print job while it is executing.
Prior art print workflows do not enable real-time control of printing, other than deleting and aborting a print job. User and document access control parameters and printer control parameters are pre-configured. Today's digital rights management and secure document environments focus on copy protection, but print control is only enforced by pre-set parameters, and by enabling or disabling printing altogether.
Thus there is a need for a dynamic print controller that can control print jobs on the fly, after the print request is issued.